Mark Steinmetz

Biography

Mark Steinmetz has spent his career, beginning in the mid-1980s, relying on chance events to capture his photographs. Working in series, his intimate black and white photographs cover such subjects as children and teenagers, small southeastern American towns, street scenes in Paris, and various Italian cities.

In alignment with this chance-driven approach, Steinmetz is committed to presenting the viewer with images that are open to multiple interpretations, as opposed to creating specific narratives or singular emotional effects. In series such as South Central (1991-1993), for which Steinmetz photographed in and around Knoxville, Tennessee, we see solitary, mostly youthful, figures in a suburban environment, often lost in contemplation. A similar atmosphere is conjured in the later, related, series, Greater Atlanta (1994-2009), in which Steinmetz catalogues car culture, fast food, convenience stores, and suburban sprawl. These understated yet richly atmospheric images invite a slow form of looking, through which numerous readings may arise.

Born in 1961, Mark Steinmetz resides in Athens, Georgia. He was recently awarded a commission from the High Museum of Art, Atlanta as part of their Picturing the South series, which will be exhibited at the museum in 2017. Steinmetz graduated from Yale’s MFA photography program in 1986, and he spent a year photographing alongside Garry Winogrand in Los Angeles during the late 1980s. He has taught at numerous prestigious colleges including: Harvard University, Yale University, Sarah Lawrence College, and Emory University.

His work has been exhibited in many major institutions, including Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, Georgia; Art Institute of Chicago; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Public collections featuring his work include Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Art Institute of Chicago; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Yale University Art Gallery; and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Nazraeli Press has published nine monographs of his work, including South Central (2006); South East (2008), Greater Atlanta (2009), The Players (2015); and Angel City West (2016). Among other awards, Mark Steinmetz was the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship.

News

MARK STEINMETZ | HIGH MUSEUM OF ART

March 3 - June 3, 2018

Mark Steinmetz: Terminus

Based in Athens, GA, Mark Steinmetz is a leading Southern artist whose lyrical photographs capture the distinctive character of the region’s people and the peculiar beauty of its built environment. Since the 1980s, he has created an exceedingly compelling and quietly poetic image of contemporary American life. Mark Steinmetz: Terminus is the latest chapter in the ongoing Picturing the South project, for which the High Museum commissions artists to create original bodies of work that offer new perspectives on the South’s social and geographical landscapes.. The exhibition is comprised of over 60 never-before-exhibited photographs.

MARK STEINMETZ | NASHER MUSEUM OF ART AT DUKE UNIVERSITY

September 1, 2016 - January 8, 2017

Southern Accent: Seeking the American South

This unprecedented exhibition addresses and complicates the many realities, fantasies and myths that have long captured the public's imagination about the American South. Presenting a wide range of perspectives, from both within and outside of the region, the exhibition creates a composite portrait of southern identity through the work of 60 artists.

MARK STEINMETZ LECTURE AT ICP

Mark Steinmetz will participate in the Photographer's Lecture Series at the International Center for Photography on March 27, 2013 from 7-9pm. Tickers for the lecture are limited and are available through ICP.

MARK STEINMETZ BOOKS RELEASED

Mark Steinmetz has released three new books in 2012, including Summertime, published by Nazraeli, idyll (with Raymond Meeks) and pastoral, both limited edition books published by Silas Finch. In 2011, TBW Books published Philip and Micheline, a book about the artist's parents. Additionally, Steinmetz's book The Ancient Tigers of My Neighborhood (Nazraeli) was nominated by Robert Adams as a best book of 2010 at the Kassel Photobook Festival.

STEINMETZ'S GREATER ATLANTA SELECTED BY PHOTO-EYE AS ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2009

Completing his trilogy, South, which includes previous books South Central and South East, Mark Steinmetz releases Greater Atlanta by Nazraeli Press. Widely praised, Greater Atlanta was nominated as one of the best books of 2009 by Photo-Eye book critics, right after Looking In: Robert Frank's The Americans, Expanded Edition.

MARK STEINMETZ RELEASES NEW BOOK

Mark Steinmetz's new book Greater Atlanta, his third with Nazraeli Press, will be released in Fall 2009. The Yale Art Gallery recently acquired a group of Steinmetz's works from the edition for their collection.

Press

THE NEW YORKERStolen Moments of Solitude at the World's Busiest Airport